Migration and Diffusion
Chapter 3
Diffusion in population geography
• Migration
– Humankind migrates and adapts
– Most important factor causing migration is
economic
– Migration of more than 50 million Europeans
during nineteenth century
– Today’s migration patterns are very different
– Examples of forced migration
– Refugee movements and their cause
Migration
– Constitutes cultural diffusion
– Represents the most basic aspect of
relocation
– Humankind has proved remarkably
adaptable to new and different
physical environments
• Except such places as ice-sheathed
Antarctica and Arabia’s “Empty Quarter”
• Permanent habitat extends from ice
sheet edges to seashores and desert
valleys
Categories
• International Migration – the big
picture
• Migration to the U.S.A. (International
migration from the point of a specific
receiving country)
• Internal Migration (U.S.A. & other
countries)
4
Migration
• The far-flung distribution of
humankind is product of
migration
• Migrating humans generally
remember the event for the rest of
their lives
• Prehistoric migrations often
remain embedded in folklore for
centuries or millennia
5
Migration Myth Example
Terminology
Immigration
Emigration
• When a person
leaves his/her home
country and goes to
live in a new
country, the
receiving country
(his/her new home)
refers to him/her as
an immigrant.
• When a person
leaves his/her home
country and goes to
live in a new
country, the former
home country (the
one he/she left)
refers to him/her as
an emigrant.
Voluntary migration
• Takes place when the difficulties of
moving seem more than offset by the
expected rewards
• Considered to be relocation diffusion
• Decision to migrate can also spread by
expansion diffusion
• Push-and-pull factors
– Act to make old home unattractive and new
land attractive
– Generally push factors are the key ones
Definitions
• Push Factors:
conditions in one’s
place of birth are
very unpleasant.
– Poverty & famine
– War
– Political, ethnic, or
religious
persecution
– Class system with
lack of social
mobility
• Pull Factors:
knowledge of
other places
makes them seem
more desirable
than the place of
birth.
– Economic
opportunities
– Freedom
– Security
Voluntary migration
• Perhaps the most important factor
prompting humans to migrate is
economic
• Since humans began migrating they
have sought greater prosperity through
better access to resources, especially
land.
• Some cultural ecologists see humans
as seeking to fill every possible
environmental niche
Push: Hunger, Poverty & Lack of
Opportunity
Migration Patterns (Brick=gain & Blue=loss)
USA Historical Immigrant Majority
Approximations
• 1840-1850s: Ireland & Germany
• Pre 1890: Western & Northern Europe
• 1900 – 1910: Southern & Central
Europe
• 1920 – 1950s: Western & Northern
Europe
• 1970s – Present: Mexico & Central
America and Asia
USA: Immigration Restrictions
• Unrestricted immigration ended in 1921
– Quota Act
– 1924 National Origins Act
• Originally to maintain European
dominance
– Later – quotas used to limit southern and
eastern European immigration
• Immigration Act 1965 ended quotas
• 1968 hemisphere quotas were put in
place
• 1978 global quota was put in place
Current Quota
• Global Quota: 620,000
• No more than 7% from a single country
• Purpose limits
– 480,000 family sponsored
– 140,000 employment related
• Quota doesn’t apply to refugees
• Also exempt: spouses, children, &
parents of U.S. citizens
Current U.S.A. Immigration
• Chain Migration pattern
– Grouping with people of same ethnicity
• Letters & communication with relatives and
friends who previously immigrated to the U.S.
• Campobello di Mazara & St. Louis, MO
Ethnic Settlements
• Ethnic settlements
– Some are assimilated and exist temporarily
• Kerry Patch (Irish) in North St. Louis
– Some remain for generations
• “The Hill” St. Louis Italians
Little India, NY city
Chinatown, S.F.
Undocumented U.S. Immigration
• Sources
– 50% students or tourists who fail to leave
– Crossing the border without visa or
passport
• 2005 statistics low estimate:
– Total in residence: 9.3 million
• 5.3 million from Mexico
• 2.2 million from other Latin American countries
• 2005 high estimate: total 11.1 million
• 2008 estimate 11.9 million
• Hispanics = 5% of civilian workforce
Rounding up undocumented alien
U.S. – Mexican problem border
• Efforts to reduce (eliminate) illegal
crossings – 2000 mile long border
– Discontinuous border fence
– Border guards can’t cover every point all
the time.
• Political problem in U.S. and between
U.S. & Mexico
• Fill jobs most U.S. citizens wouldn’t
take & are often exploited.
• What tax-supported services should
they receive? Education, welfare, etc.?
Guest Workers
• Migrate from Less Developed Countries
to Europe and the Middle East
• Hold undesirable, low-paying jobs
• Examples:
–
–
–
–
Construction workers in Dubai
Turks in Germany
African street “merchants” in Rome
Undocumented aliens in U.S.A.
• Send money back home to support
family and/or relatives back home
• Welcome in “boom” not in “recession”
Workers from Turkey in Germany
Workers being deported from Malaysia
Mexican Guests in N. Carolina
Polish guest workers in Italy
Exploitation of Guest Workers
“Dormitory” for guest workers in
United Arab Emirates
Interregional migration in U.S.A.
• Movement from one region of a country
to another
– Historic “westward movement”
– Dust Bowl era “Oakies”
– Southern African Americans to northern
industrial cities
– “Rust Belt” to the “Sun Belt”
• Economic activity shift – decline in heavy
industry manufacturing – increase in service jobs
and high-tech manufacturing
• Air-conditioning made southern locations more
desirable than they were previously
Pop. Change by counties
Interregional Migratrion Elsewhere
• Russia
– Eastward to jobs in resource rich Siberia
– Westward from inhospitable environs to
European Russia
• Brazil
– From large coastal cities to the interior
• Indonesia
– From Java (Jawa) to less densely populated
islands
• India
– Restrictions to relocating in Assam Province
Brazilia built to attract people to
interior
Intraregional Migration
• Rural to Urban migration
– 50% urban worldwide
today
– 20 million a year make this
move
– Skyrocketing in LDCs –
Africa, Asia , Latin America
– Most seeking economic
opportunities
– Live in barrios (squatter
settlements)
Urban to Suburban
• St. Louis example: approximations
– 1950
•
•
•
•
St. Louis City
– 800.000
St. Louis County
– 200000
– 2000
•
•
•
•
St. Louis City
– 300,000
St. Louis County
– 1,000,000
Reverse Migration
• Primarily in More Developed countries
– Back to cities – gentrification
• Lafayette Square
• Georgetown in D.C.
• Counterurbanization – move from urban area
to rural areas or small towns.
– Boeing Aircraft workers living in the Union, Mo.
Area
• Prompted by less need to work in the “office” all the
time.
Gentrification
Characteristics of Migrants
• Gender
– Historically more males than females –
economic motivation
– Pattern has shown reversals in U.S.A.
– African guest workers in European Union –
a similar shift
• Family Status
– Most long-distant migrants are young
adults
– U.S.A. increasing female migrants has also
increased the numbers of children entering
Traditional Male Farm Workers
Relocation Migration (long-distance)
Israel
• These Russian Jews (previous slide) are
bargaining for fabric with a Bedouin at
the Thursday market in Beersheba, an
ancient city at the edge of the Negev
Desert.
• Voluntary long-distance migrants, they
were only recently permitted to leave
the former Soviet Union
Israel
• Push-and-pull factors were Russian
discriminatory practices, and Jewish
perceptions of Israel as “The Promised
Land” and place of refuge.
• In 1950, Israel passed the “Law of Return”
which gave every Jew the right to settle in
Israel.
• Such immigrants are known as “olim”
Forced (involuntary) Migration
• ” Westward displacement of Native
Americans in the United States
• Dispersal of Jews from Israel in Roman
times
• Terrible export of African slaves to the
Americas
• Brutal “clearings” of Scottish farmers by
landlords to make way for large-scale
sheep raising
Encouraged or Coerced Migration
• Not well received in Kalimantan
Forced or Coerced Migration
• Today refugee movements are common
– Rwandans in Congo
– Palestinians in Syria, Lebanon, & Jordan
– Sudanese in Kenya
• Prompted by (Push Factors)
–
–
–
–
Despotism
War
Ethnic hatreds
Famine
Forced or Coerced Migration
• By mid-1900s, 18 million people
lived outside their homelands as
refugees
• Great dislocations are occurring
in southern Asia and Africa
• An additional 21 million
displaced persons resided in
their own countries
Cultural-demographic interaction
• Political factors
– Examples of ethnic cleansing
• Rwanda
• Darfur
• Bosnia
– Examples of countries with immigration
laws
Cultural-demographic interaction
• Economic factors
– Effects of industrialization
– Agricultural changes affected population
density
– Protein deficiency and malnutrition
primarily in developing countries
Economic factors
• In the past 200 years,
industrialization has caused
the greatest voluntary
migration in world history as
people have clustered in
manufacturing regions
• Agricultural changes can have
a similar effect with less impact
on population distribution
Economic factors
• Mechanization of cotton and
wheat cultivation in 20th
century America
–Allowed crops to be raised by
a much smaller labor force
–Resulted in great depopulation
–Many small towns ceased to
exist
Cultural-demographic interaction
• Gender and geodemography
–
Women from specific countries
seen as “desirable” immigrants good workers
• 19th century Irish females often found
work as domestic servants
– Asia’s booming sex industry
discussed
Gender and Geodemography
• James Tyner studied Philippine
migration
– Female “entertainers” made up 95% of
migrants to Japan
– Poverty partly provided “push” factor
– Pull factor – Japanese males see
Filipinas as highly desirable, exotic sex
objects
– Japenese males also see Filipinas as
culturally inferior and “willing victims”
The settlement landscape
• Farm villages
– Vary in size
– Most common form of agricultural
settlement in many regions
– Most formed by irregular unplanned
clustering
– Three types of regular planned villages
• Street village
• Green village
• Checkerboard
The settlement landscape
• Farm villages
– Farmers journey out from villages
each day to work the land
– Most common form of settlement in:
• Much of Europe
• Many parts of Latin America
• Densely settled farming regions in India,
China, Japan, Africa and Middle East
– Most are irregular clusterings
developed spontaneously over the
centuries
The settlement landscape
• Farm villages (continued)
– Provide safety
– Location tied to local environmental
conditions
– Various communal ties bind villagers
together
Clustered farm village
Val Tavetsch, Switzerland
• This is a clustered or nucleated settlement
in a glaciated region of the Swiss Alps.
• The importance of religion is suggested
by the central position of the Protestant
church, the tallest structure.
• Farmers live in the village and journey to
and from their fields as needed.
Val Tavetsch, Switzerland
• The main crops are hay and other feeds
for dairy herds that are grazing in alpine
pastures for the summer.
• Feed crops are mowed and stored for
winter in barns beneath people’s living
quarters or in outlying storage buildings
high on the slopes.
Semiclustered row village
Inner Mongolia, China
• This Chinese-Mongol linear settlement is
situated in the context of feng-shui guides.
• Proper orientation dictates “back to the north
and face to the south.”
• The dryer slope is facing south.
• Correct placement also calls for mountains
behind and a stream in the front.
• The straw pile is from wheat which is threshed
by human and animal power.
• Horses, sheep and pigs are also raise here.
• Coal for fuel is delivered by truckload.
Farm villages
Street Village
• The street village is the simplest of the
planned types
– Farmsteads grouped along both sides of a
single central street
– Produce an elongated settlement
– Particularly common in Eastern Europe
including much of Russia
Green Villages
• Green villages – farmsteads grouped
around a central open place, or green,
which forms a common
– Occur on the plains areas of northern and
northwestern Europe
– English immigrant laid out some in colonial
New England
Checkerboard Village
• Checkerboard village
– based on a gridiron
pattern of streets
meeting at right
angles
– Found in the layout of
Utah’s Mormon
villages
– Dominate most of rural
Latin America and
northeastern China
Why farm people huddle
together in villages
• Defense – countryside was threatened
by roving bands of outlaws and raiders
• Villages grew larger in times of
insecurity then shrunk during peaceful
times
• In deserts and limestone areas ground
absorbs moisture quickly, so farmsteads
huddled at good water sources
• In marshes, swamps, and areas subject
to floods people settle on available high
ground
Village Settlement Landscape
• Various communal ties bind villagers
together
– Blood relationships
– Religious customs like Mormon clustered
villages in Utah
– Communal or state ownership of land –
China and Israel
• Closely knit villagers usually depend on
crops for their livelihood
– Tillage requires less land than stock raising
– Villagers do not have to travel far distances
from farmstead to fiel
– Found mainly in AngloAmerica, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa
– Mainly found in lands
colonized by emigrating
Europeans
– Some appear in Japan,
Europe, and parts of India
– Lived on by individual
pioneer families
– Peace and security in
the countryside
Isolated
farmsteads
Isolated farmsteads
• Reasons for isolated farmstead
development
– Removal of the need for defense
– Colonization by individual pioneer families
rather than socially cohesive groups
– Agricultural private enterprise as opposed to a
form of communalism
– Rural economies dominated by livestock
raising
– Well drained land where water is readily
available
– Most date from colonization of new farmland in
the last two or three centuries
Semiclustered rural settlement
• Share characteristics of both clustered and
dispersed types
• Hamlet – the most common kind, consists
of a small number of farmsteads grouped
loosely together
– Farmsteads lie in a settlement nucleus separate
from the cropland
– Smaller and less compact, containing as few as 3
or 4 houses
– Occur most often in poorer hill districts
– Common in parts of western Europe, China,
India, the Philippines, and Vietnam
Irregular clustered village
• Irregular village – several hamlets lying close
to one another share a common name
– Often linked to various clans or religious groups
– Most comon in southeastern Europe, Malaya,
Bangladesh, southern Japan, India
– A deliberate segregation of inhabitants, either
voluntary or involuntary
– India’s farmers of the “untouchable” cast are
occasionally segregated
• Row village – a loose chain of
farmsteads spaced at intervals
along a road, river or canal, often
extending for many miles
– Appear in the hills and marshlands
of central and northwestern Europe
– Also found in French-settled
portions of North America – Quebec
and Louisiana
• “Cajun” row villages are found along
Bayou Lafourche in Louisiana
• Dwellings are so close to one another
that a baseball could be thrown from
house to house for more than a hundred
miles
Reading the cultural landscape
• Rural settlement
forms provide a
chance to “read”
the cultural
landscape, but we
must look for the
subtle too, and not
jump to
conclusions
• Example: Maya
Indians of the
Yucatan
• Reside in checkerboard
villages
• Before Spanish
conquest, Mayas lived in
templed wet-point
villages of irregular
clustered type
• Villages located along
cenotes – natural
sinkholes providing
water in a land with no
surface streams
• Spanish destroyed
original settlements
replacing them with
checkerboard villages
to accommodate
wheeled vehicle.
• A close look reveals
the prevalence of
Mayan ways with a
casual distribution of
dwellings
• Spanish
influenced
architecture
remains confined
to areas near the
central plaza
– Flat-roofed houses
of stone
– Town hall, church,
and a hacienda
mansion
• Indian influence increases markedly with
distance from the plaza
– Traditional Maya pole huts with thatched, hipped
roofs
– Separate cook houses of the same design
– Doorway gardens surrounding each hut contain
traditional Indian plants
– Yards are ringed with traditionally dry rock walls
where pigs share the ground with turkeys
– Many still speak the Mayan language
– Though Catholicism prevails, the absence of
huts around the cenote suggest a lingering
pagan sanctity
Conclusions
• Humankind unevenly distributed across
the Earth
• Spatial variations in demographics
depicted as cultural regions
• Use of cultural diffusion in analyzing
human migration, spread of birthcontrol, and diseases
Conclusions
• Viewpoint of cultural ecology
– How environment and peoples’ perception of it
influence human distribution
– Pop. density link to level of environment alteration
– Overpopulation’s negative impact on environment
• Use of cultural integration to suggest how
demography and mobility are linked
– Cultural attitudes can encourage people to be
mobile or stay in one place
– Spatial variation in demographic traits are
enmeshed in the fabric of future
• The cultural landscape expresses how people
distribute themselves across Earth’s surface
Sequent occupance reveals culture changes
1. Cultural landscape – the total impact of
human action upon the natural conditions
– changes made by humans – an
expression of their culture.
•
Cultures rise and fall
•
Cultures change
•
Cultures are replaced by other
cultures
2. The cultural landscape changes in
response to the growth of a culture or its
replacement
Central America Sequence